Mr. Noel Cunniffe:

In a previous life, I worked on that 400 kV project in Mayo and I experienced some of that lack of public support, as did some of my EirGrid colleagues here. My colleague Mr. Moran had similar experiences with the Grid Link project in the south of Ireland. A number of very large-scale infrastructure projects were proposed as part of the Grid25 programme. I will let colleagues in EirGrid describe that in more detail. Many of those were not progressed because, about ten years ago, there was not political support at national and local levels for many of those projects. Had those projects been delivered, our country would be in a much stronger position to grow demand, expand renewables and take offshore wind power from off our west coast, including Mayo. We are still experiencing that today with the delivery of the North-South interconnector. Colleagues in EirGrid and ESB Networks are doing a great job in trying to get that project over the line but there is continued political opposition to it. That is absolutely vital infrastructure for our island to progress and to grow our economy.